India sees gas from Iran via Pakistan in 2012

Work on a long-delayed gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan has speeded up dramatically, with the first construction tenders expected to be awarded in 2006 and first gas flowing in 2012, India said on Thursday.
"There is a very intensive dialogue between Iran, India and Pakistan. Pakistan will take a decision by Dec. 31," Indian Petroleum and Gas Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told an industry conference in Baku.

"The project will be on the ground by the New Year and we must start awarding contracts next year," he said.

The plan for a giant pipeline from Iran, which holds the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia, was long stuck due to political tensions between India and Pakistan.

But Aiyar said improving relations between the two neighbours lifted hopes that their fast-growing and energy-hungry economies would get Iranian gas by early next decade.

"If we start building it in 2006 we will be able to complete the project by 2012," said Aiyar.

He also said India may need additional gas supplies as its economy was growing at a healthy pace of 7 percent a year. He said another long-delayed gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan could be extended to India.


India's oil minister Wednesday said he expected Pakistani, Indian and Iranian officials would meet later this year to hammer out a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline project from Iran.
"We have so far held bilateral talks but I hope that all the three countries could sit together by the end of this year," Mani Shankar Aiyar told reporters during a visit to the Pakistani city of Karachi.
On Sunday he held talks with his Pakistani counterpart Amanullah Khan Jadoon, in the first meeting between the Indian and Pakistani oil ministers on the 4.5 billion-dollar overland gas pipeline project which would stretch for 2,600 kilometres (1,612-miles).
The two sides decided to form a joint working group to study financial, legal and technical aspects of the project. The committee would meet frequently to take the project off the ground, Aiyar said.
"The committee should meet six times in the next six months so that we (could) get the project off the ground next year," he said.
Negotiations on the pipeline started in 1994 but made little headway because of tensions between Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars since their 1947 independence from Britain.
But relations have been improving since the two countries launched a peace process in January 2004.



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